My Worst Fear
by Fern Walters
Summary: Fern has had a break with reality after many years of battling her inner emotions. Now at her lowest point she is forced to look into the face of the boy who started it all for her. Can she escape her past to recover? One-shot.


**MY WORST FEAR**

My mind is cracked, shattered from twenty years of adult life and the stress that comes with it. I can no longer stay by myself, alone, with my struggles. I have had no choice but to let my mother know about the wishes, my desire to get rid of myself. Twenty years gave me plenty of reasons to want to leave, but my experience have taught me this is not the best way. I must share my thoughts, accept that I am mentally ill, and take necessary steps towards treatment.

I kept pressing the button on the alert necklace around my neck. It was a precaution because they knew I wanted help more than I wanted to end my life, not that I could with a necklace made from a single fragile cotton thread. The call was needed because my doctor desired to see how medication would affect me. I knew, for a fact, that I was hallucinating, and I needed a nurse ASAP.

"Yes, Miss Walters?" the nurse inquired. She was half my age, fresh out of college, and probably had her life together. Yet she was taking me and my mosaic mind seriously. She didn't flinch when I told her. She merely asked for information as she pulled a palm pilot out of her apron pocket, "What do you see, where, and how clear?"

"Him, over there," I pointed, adding meekly, "Please tell me he's not real."

The nurse stopped typing and put away the device, which told me my fears were coming true. "He is real, Miss. His name is Mr. Baxter. Do I need to move you?" she questioned, as if she knew the history, not that she ever could. Buster happened before her time, and he was the biggest fracture of all.

 _Flashback_

We were the best of friends. We met up every morning in the cafeteria where we shared everything, from meals to secrets. I let him into my world, calling him to have conversations that lasted most of our evenings, which for us was until ten o'clock when my father or his mother would cut us off. We discussed everything, from out interests to my projects. I was open with him about everything I was writing, and I even let him into the process, asking him where I should go.

I never told him how he inspired some of my characters, many of my male characters. He was my partner in real life, so he had to be my co-detective whenever I added myself into the story. If it wasn't a mystery, I needed him for drama and romance, and his characters were always there to fulfill whatever role I wrote for him.

He knew this was my escape without ever asking for details because he knew my story. He knew my life was falling apart around me, or he could assume by my vicious mood swings that even I didn't understand. I often woke up a deflated balloon, and getting through the day was a battle I had to fight. He stood beside me, but I knew it was getting to him. It was hurting him to see me hurt, but we were there for a good time only. I tried to keep our time together as normal as possible, but that side of me always made it back. How could it not in a school as small as ours?

Buster was my bright spot, the one thing that kept me going, and I could tell from my stories and my dreams that he meant more to me than just a best friend. He was someone I could love, someone I wanted to hold hands with and hug and surround myself with. I wanted him to be my everything, so I decided to craft a letter to let him know how I felt, namely to see if he felt the same way.

A mutual friend delivered the letter, but he told me his response in-person in the same cafeteria where we'd built our friendship. He told me he didn't feel the same way.

JUST FRIENDS.

The words haunted me every moment of every day and every night as they filled my dreams. I was more broken than ever, but I tried to maintain our friendship. I acted like everything was normal, but they weren't, they never could be, not after such rejection. My first instinct was anger. I had no idea what to do with my feelings, so I turned darker. It took nearly a month before I knew exactly what I had to do. I had to escape and remove him from my life forever.

 _End flashback_

The doctor didn't ask for any reasons. He kept me in an area away from Buster, but he never wanted details. I had to heal on my own, so it was about that healing which dominated our sessions. Did I still have a desire to self-harm or die? Was I hallucinating? What was different, if anything?

That was the only question I lied about. I couldn't tell him that Buster was still in my dreams, still haunting me. That was the tipping point in the first place. I dreamed that he had called me, and I had to ask how he got the number, a defensive question. Even after twenty years, however, I couldn't turn him away, because everything in me desperately wanted him back.

 _Flashback_

I could escape him, but only if I reshaped everything about myself. I had done this before to escape enemies, but I never thought I'd have to treat him in the same fashion. His locker was on a shortcut hallway, so I took the long way around. He kept his place at our table in the cafeteria for breakfast and lunch, so I found new friends in other places. It was painfully difficult but I had no choice after I did what I needed to, after I formally pushed him away.

The first year was the hardest but not necessarily because of my own feelings. A mutual friend di everything within her power to play Devil's Advocate, saying horrible things about the other person whenever she was with you. I already assumed this but it was an old friend who overheard and confirmed my suspicions. I knew then I had to remove her from my life as well, which was much easier than the first separation. I could pretend to be busy and be correct. I didn't have to fake a rejection, feign a hatred.

This lasted until the end of the year, and after a quiet, uneventful summer, I faced them both for a final year of hell. It was easier than I expected to keep away from them and my past. I formed new bonds and kept myself from them. None of us had classes together, almost a divine blessing, and I could see a light at the end of the dark tunnel which was high school.

Then the terms changed and I found myself back in Buster's life. Not only did we share a class together, but he had found a girlfriend who just happened to be friends with my new friends. The class was easy enough to pretend in. We rarely crossed paths, and any time we were partnered up, which was extremely rare, I handled it like a business encounter. What choice did I have in such a situation? I cared too much about my grades to let him get in the way.

The trouble came from his two-timing girlfriend and the mutual friends who discussed her indiscretions. He needed to know and my name found its way on the message to help the group save face. A battle commenced from him as these two forces converged…but I withstood it. He was erased from my mind, and I could move on knowing our time together was a distant, yet still painful, memory.

 _End flashback_

The counselor took over my case when I left the center. Medication left me numb, but I had to face the dreams, the flooding of memories, and the few sightings of Buster that in treatment that increased these problems ten-fold. The nurse's report for the call came up during my second visit since moving in with my mother and attending these sessions. Moving in with my mother would allow me to slowly pick up the pieces without bills or chores to hold me under, but I would have to do the rest myself.

I needed to be honest, so I started at the beginning, "I had a dream twenty-five days ago that the man in that center called me. He is someone from my past, an important fragment that I have worked desperately hard to cover up, to bury, to lock away…unsuccessfully. But this time? This time was like none of the others."

She made notes but said nothing, so I voiced my concerns, "My theory now is that someone talked about him or wrote of him without me realizing, but my subconscious made the connection. It knows I still want desperately to know if he still has an empty spot from his past where I'm supposed to go, a dust-covered crack in his soul that I alone created."

The counselor remained quiet so I kept going, "I know I was never more than a close friend who became a lost one the moment things got serious long ago. I could never be anything more because he never got to meet the real me who wasn't being strangled by unbridled hormones and the prison-like environment of high school. I never meant a thing, and because of the meddling of other people, he'll hate me until the end of time or erase me altogether."

Finally the counselor spoke, "We all have people like this from our past. If this was the tipping point, we need to explore everything. When you achieve peace again, you can once again face the world."

I knew then that I would try to heal but it would all be pretend, because despite everything, losing him again would be my greatest fear.

-End


End file.
